On another show, last June, Dadis hu-
miliated the German ambassador, Karl
Prinz, who had dared question him
about his political intentions. To the
shock and amusement of the studio au-
dience, Dadis dressed down the ambas-
sador, who stood uncomfortably in the
audience for long minutes. At one
point, Dadis shouted, "Don't take me
for your little boy. . . . You are speaking
to a President."
I first met President Dadis late at
night, at Camp Alpha Yaya Diallo,
the military compound where he was
living. The camp is a kind of Guinean
Fort Hood, a vast complex of military
housing spread over a hillside on the
southern edge of Conakry. Except for
the absence of roadside-shanty shops,
there is little noticeable difference be-
tween its interior and the rest of the
city; soldiers and civilians move around
on foot, and there are laundry lines and
cook fires everywhere. A half mile or so
in from the main entrance is the apart-
ment block that was serving as Dadis's
Presidential palace, a series of flat-
roofed three-story buildings made out
of breeze blocks and painted light
green, beige, and apricot. It reminded
me of low-income housing projects I
had seen in Florida.
The façade of Dadis's building was
hung with huge banners exalting him.
One showed a map of Guinea with an
open hand poised over it, and the words
"Dadis President." In front of the build-
ing was a large lot where pickup trucks
and a number of jeeps and armored
personnel carriers were parked. A cou-
ple of dozen Red Berets-tough-look-
ing, muscular young men with weapons
and unfriendly expressions-lounged
around the entrance. When I was
shown in, Dadis appeared distracted
and barely mustered a hello. Then, with
his mood alternating between morose-
ness and defiance, he embarked on a
monologue that lasted for more than
two hours.
Dadis is a small, hard-faced man
with tiny eyes, a lantern jaw, and yel-
low-tinged skin. Before he joined the
Army, he had studied law and eco-
nomics. He received military training
in Germany, and served with U.N.
peacekeepers in Sierra Leone during
the civil war there. His last position
before he took power had been man-
aging the Guinean Army's fuel sup-
plies. At our first meeting, he was
barefoot, and sat in a high-backed
black leather executive chair that
dwarfed him. His desk was piled with
folders and papers, remote controls,
mobile phones, a Koran, a Bible, an
inlaid-wood globe, and a porcelain
Madonna with a rosary. (Dadis is a
Christian in a country that is eighty-
five per cent Muslim.) Around the
room were several large, gilt-framed
oil portraits of the President in heroic
poses.
The conviction was growing in the
international press that Dadis was re-
sponsible for the massacre and would
have to relinquish his office. Scowling,
he insisted to me that he was not to
blame. "For fifty years, we've had an
army that is unstructured and disorga-
nized, and I have inherited this situa-
tion," he said. "For nine months, I was
fighting drugs on my own. I arrested
former Prime Ministers, officials-
even the son of the President!" He
went on, shouting by now, "So why
does the U.S. want to fight against me?
What happened in New York City on
9/11? It was drugs and international
terrorism!" His political opponents
were mosdy Muslim, and he claimed
that they were not just narco-traffickers
but also religious extremists. He pro-
duced a DVD and held it up in the air.
"It shows that intégristes"-fundamen-
talists-"and Al Qgeda had weapons
in the stadium on September 28th," he
said, and promised to give me a copy
later. Al Qgeda provoked the stadium
violence, he said, exploiting the fact
that the Army was "disorganized-
knowing that it would react." The in-
tégristes had opened fire, he said. "The
police who were there asked for help.
So a lot of soldiers went over there. A
panic broke out. I wanted to go there,
but the military people here begged me
to stay. They said, 'You are President,
you must stay here. You cannot go to
the field to intervene.' So that's what
happened."
During the massacre, Dadis's Red
Berets were led by his aide-de-camp,
Lieutenant Aboubacar (Toumba) Di-
akité. In our conversation, Dadis sug-
gested that T oumba had acted on his
own authority. "When he heard that
the military were going there, my
A.D.C. followed the troops to the sta-
dium," he said. "The A.D.C. went
there from here, but he did not receive
orders from me."
Dadis's tribe, the Kpelle, represents
less than five per cent of Guineàs pop-
ulation. In the Army, he forged rela-
tionships with officers of the much
larger Mandinka tribe. Toumba is a
Mandinka, and so are Sékouba Konaté,
the Vice-President and Secretary of
Defense, and Moussa Tiegboro Ca-
mara, the chief of a special commando
unit charged with fighting drugs and
organized crime.
On the morning of September
28th, Dadis ordered Tiegboro to go
and persuade the opposition leaders to
call off their rally. Tiegboro was unsuc-
cessful. At one point, his commandos
fired on marchers as they gathered
outside the stadium, reportedly killing
several people. An hour or so later,
with the rally under way, T oumba and
the Red Berets burst into the stadium,
firing their weapons into the crowd.
Soon afterward, Toumba led his sol-
diers to the bleachers where the op-
position leaders were sitting. There
he oversaw the beating of several of
the politicians. He then walked the
leaders out of the stadium, past other
Red Berets, who were gang-raping
women.
Dadis argued that he had been lenient
with the opposition, and that his soldiers'
response had been provoked. 'When we
heard that some of the leaders were
wounded, I told my military to take them
to the best clinics," he said. "Yes, people
died at the stadium, but it was not a
peaceful march. The protesters broke
into police stations and destroyed, and
they stole weapons. O.K., the U.S. will
make me leave, but after me comes inté-
gristes, AI Qgeda, and a narco-trafficking
government! They will miss an Mrican
like me afterward, because there will not
be another like me."
It seemed more likely that China
would miss Dadis if he left office. Two
weeks before I arrived, Guineàs mining
minister had announced a seven-bil-
lion-dollar deal with a Chinese consor-
tium for exploration and extraction
rights to a range of raw materials, in ex-
change for a new power plant, paved
roads, and other development projects.
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 12, 2010 29